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I somehow managed to finish a game this week. Now, I am not all that proud of the game, but my son thinks it’s cool, so I am going with that. The game is called “Grape Boy” and its premise is pretty simple: You play Grape Boy, a character who catches grapes in his mouth. The more grapes you catch, the higher your score. If a grape hits the ground, Grape Boy loses a life.

When I started the week, I had all kinds of “fantastic” game ideas but as time went on and I worked through my lofty game designs, I could see that I needed to simplify. Thus Grape Boy was born.

Panic set in around Monday evening. It just didn’t seem possible that I was going to complete a full game in a week using traditional programming techniques. I needed a plan B if I was going to make good on my commitment. That’s when I gave Construct 2 a go. I briefly experimented with the game construction kit about two years ago and thought it would be easy to pick up (maybe wished would be a better description). Through the years, I’ve learned that with software development there is always something to fight. There is no such thing as painless development. Frustration is a constant. The folks at Scirra have done a fantastic job of making a very powerful and “easy” to use game kit. If you don’t have a programming background I suspect using Construct 2 is the easiest way to go. For me, it was a different story. I had to restrain my desire to write code and figure out how to accomplish the task using events sheets and layouts. Having a full time job didn’t make it any easier, but I couldn’t let lame excuses get in the way of my goal. I had hoped that my focus on fun would somehow make everything go smoother… No, fun as game development was, there were a lot of hours of “Why doesn’t that just work like in the example?” or “I can’t believe it’s so hard to do this simple thing” and a few hushed expletives as well. I spent most of the week just learning how the game tool worked, but I felt confident that if I stuck with it, Construct 2 would pay off in the end. Grape Boy doesn’t have all the features that I would have liked, but it is a complete game and that was my goal. I wished it had sound and more play elements, but I ran out of time and decided it was better to post a little game than no game at all. I am proud that I was able to add a high scores feature. Now you can try to best my high score. I love a good competition!

The whole experiment had unexpected rewards for me too. My son caught the game development bug and started writing a game of his own. He is working on his latest masterpiece as I write this post. Thing 1 is a natural gamer and is amazingly talented. One minute I look over at his monitor and he is playing Supreme Commander and the next I see him polishing off an amazing looking space game. All without asking me a single question. I am in awe of his creativity and imagination. I can’t wait to see what he will create next. In the near future, I will be posting his latest creations to AdventuresInPlay.com/games.

Well, this week I plan to take a break from game development to finish off my taxes and take care of my to-do list.

OK, it’s Tuesday and I need a change of plans! I had a case of the Munday’s yesterday, so not too much to report on the game front. I did however get an email from Gamasutra informing me about a great deal at Yoyo Games where you can get a copy of Game Maker Standard edition for FREE until March 2, 2014. I downloaded and installed Game Maker just to try it out. The really neat thing about Game Maker is that you can write games for Mac or Windows without a single line of code. After trying it out for an hour, I could see some real potential in Game Maker for my rapid game development projects. However, I feel the time pressure to get something done for Sunday, so I don’t want to spend too much time learning a new game development environment. That’s when I remembered another great tool for quickly creating games called, Construct 2 by Scirra. With Construct 2 you can create non-commercial game for free for multiple platforms. The really great thing about Construct 2 is that your game came be played on almost any platform without an installation. The free-edition does have some limitations, like limited program events and limited platform support but overall this is a great tool for my gaming projects. There is a learning curve to using Construct 2 as well, but I did some of the tutorials a couple of years ago, so I think I can get a game up and running without too much fuss. So, I’ve decided that my first gaming project won’t just be playable on Macs, you’ll be able to run my game from Adventures in Play without any installation on your computer.

Now, I need to get back to it and finalize my game concept, but first I have to go to work. I’ll report back tomorrow with some screenshots of my initial game ideas.